Avengers Apocalypse
by YetAnotherLonelyFangirl
Summary: In a zombie apocalypse created by none other than Tony Stark, Y/N, a dimensional traveler from our world, has lost her memory. As she tries to run from an possessive and possibly insane Steve Rogers while fighting Tony's new world order, will she be able to save this strange world? Reader insert, eventual Steve Rogers/Reader. Rated for explicit gore and character deaths.
1. Chapter 1

_Summary:_

 _Tony's finally destroyed the world through a zombie apocalypse. Y/N, back from saving the universe, loses her memory in a freak accident. Now, with no idea what the heck is happening, Y/N must save the day while running from an obsessive, crazed Captain America and trying to stop the new world order Iron Man has established. Will she be able to save the world? Will she regain her memories? Will she ever find a decent pair of shoes…?_

 _I'm gonna level with you- this is gonna get sappy at times. Lots of angst, so grab something stable and hang on._

 _-0-0-0-_

Chapter 1

Steve had always known that Tony would one day do something that the Avengers couldn't clean up after. It was practically inevitable, in his opinion. He just hadn't thought it would be this soon.

It all started with a Hydra super weapon they had recovered. Tony, of course, wanted to reverse engineer the thing, which appeared to be a virus, to see what it was. He wanted to experiment with it on rats, learn how it worked.

"If we know how they make it, we can use that to keep an eye on suppliers of those materials and find out if anybody tries to make it again," Tony had pleaded with his friends, trying to make them forget the whole Ultron fiasco. "And if I can learn how it works, I can find a cure and counter it! What if they made more? What if they're already planning to drop it on some highly-populated area? The deaths will be on our heads then if we don't learn about this thing," he had urged, circling the room nervously.

The Avengers had finally relented. Retrospectively, they should have been more hesitant about letting Tony do something like this on his own. If Banner had been there, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

If She had been there, undoubtedly none of this would have happened.

Steve wished desperately that She had been there. Every time something had gone wrong, She had known it was coming and warned them. The times She couldn't warn them because their ignorance would save more lives in the long run, She put herself directly in harm's way to save the lives that She could. If She hadn't been off in God knows whatever other dimension at the time, Steve knew with no uncertainty that She would have fixed this, prevented it somehow. Instead, he was alone in this desolate wasteland, friendless and hungry. What reason could he have to go on? He settled into a pile of rubble to sob, sob like he hadn't since the painful early days.

-0-0-0-

 _One Month Prior:_

"What have I done…" Tony mumbled to himself as he surveyed the horrible scene.

Zombies.

Who would have known?

 _Me,_ he reminded himself. _I would have known. I SHOULD have known,_ he corrected himself. _I should have known and I screwed this up._

It had been a simple mistake. How could he have known the consequences? Long hours of slaving over this formula had been unfruitful. He got angry, he got careless, he had dropped the vial. To his horror, the fluid within instantly vaporized at the impact, creating a much larger cloud of sickly yellow fog than should be possible, given the small size of the vial. He tried to close the windows and doors, to seal the virus in with him as long as possible. What he forgot to do was to turn off the ventilation fan.

"No! NO!" he cried, tripping over a table of beakers as he tried to reach the off switch. Pointless. By the time he turned off the device, all the fog had been sucked out into the open air. He couldn't be responsible for more lives… not after Sokovia…

He slapped himself a few times and turned himself back to the work bench. After exposure to such a concentrated form of the virus, he diagnosed himself with hours to live. He had to find the cure for when the released virus cloud started taking effect. Downtown New York wouldn't know what hit them, and Tony wasn't about to let his stupidity destroy the world… _again_.

-0-0-0-

Y/N knew, upon stepping out of the portal, that something terrible had happened. She thought back to the movies. According to the Stone, it was just after the events of Age of Ultron. Nothing should be happening now, except for a few minor issues. The world shouldn't be in an uproar like this.

And yet, it was. Hordes of people flocked to the streets, screaming. Children stood crying, having lost their parents in the rush. Suitcases lay open on the ground, shop windows had been smashed and were in the process of being smashed. Chaos.

Y/N immediately began to worry for her Avenger friends. Nothing good ever happened to them at times like this, especially when the problem was something unscheduled, something that wasn't in the movies from her dimension. The immortal tried harder to remember if something was supposed to happen, perhaps she had only forgotten.

Whenever the Stone made her dimension-shift, her memory of the past dimension always went a bit hazy. Every jump further clouded her memories, to the point where she could only remember her adventures for three dimensions back, and barely remember that even.

But this dimension was her home. The Avengers were her family. Through sheer willpower she had retained most of the memories, and as she finished delving through the depths of her mind, she concluded that she had not forgotten anything. This wasn't part of the movies. This was bad news.

The moaning in the distance amped up its volume. Y/N hadn't noticed that before, but now that she listened carefully, it sounded terribly familiar…

A bloody, mutilated figure appeared down the crowded street and began tearing into an unfortunate woman. As an icy jolt ran through her heart, Y/N realized that it was a zombie. Impossible!

She leapt into action, pulling her handy knife from her belt. Using her enhanced strength, she skewered the undead attacker through his skull, pleased to see that it immediately went limp. _These work like the Walking Dead zombies, then. That's good, I've dealt with them before,_ she nodded to herself, memories of her time in that dimension becoming more clear. She turned her attention to the woman on the ground.

Her throat was shredded clean through, there was no way this lady was alive. Y/N looked around at the terrified crowd, all of whom were fixated on the gory scene.

"You should all probably stay inside. Stock up with some food and water and lock your doors," she suggested in her gravest tone. The screaming, which Y/N hadn't noticed had stopped, quickly resumed as the people vacated the streets with haste.

A crying child remained. Y/N knelt next to him, horror growing.

"Hey… was this… was this your mum?" She asked the inconsolable six-year-old. Gasping for breaths around his sobs, he nodded and wrung his shirt with his pudgy little hands. Sighing, she scooped him up. She couldn't leave him behind, but she had to find the Avengers and soon. "Do you know where your dad is?" she gently questioned.

"He-he-he's de-ead too-oo" the unfortunate child howled. Y/N flinched.

"Ok, you can come with me then," she decided, more to herself than to him. Using her enhanced strength, she raced down the street with him on her hip. More zombies were appearing, more people were dying, and some of them appeared to be coming back from the dead as she ran past. She didn't stop; there wasn't time for that. She had to find her friends. Maybe Tony could fix this problem from the roots.


	2. Chapter 2

_Just starting out with two chapters right off the bat so you have more than a few hundred words to read_ _enjoy_

 _-0-0-0_

Chapter 2

As Tony stood at the top of his tower watching the utter chaos unfold below, the last person he would ever have expected to walk onto the rooftop was Y/N. But, it was Y/N that walked out of the stairs, hair blowing dramatically in the high wind.

"…Am I dreaming?" he asked, sure that his three days of no sleep were playing tricks on his mind. Y/N shook her head.

"Tony, tell me what's going on," she demanded. His blood spattered immortal friend had a kid with a runny nose on her hip. He pushed aside his disgust, because when you've doomed the human race you don't really get to be grossed out by kids…

"Um… come inside, I'll tell you everything," he said.

He didn't have to. The shameful look on his face told Y/N everything she needed to know.

"No time," she interjected seemingly oblivious to the kid wiping his nose on her shirt. "Can you fix it?"

"Yes, but it will be too late," Tony sighed. "I've been listening to the radio, somehow this virus has spread worldwide. Whenever somebody dies, they turn into one of these things. If they bite somebody, that person dies from the virus and turns into one of them. And they seem to like to tear people apart," he added, sneaking another peek over the railing at the gore. "It's like that TV show you watch. It's terrible." At his conclusion, the interdimensional traveler strode over to Tony and grabbed a large fistful of his shirt.

"You listen to me, mother fu-" she started, cutting off her curse as she remembered the dazed boy she was carrying. "Ffffffff..frog," she finally decided on. "You are the only person who can do anything to help right now. Pull yourself out of your guilt and do something! As long as we have a few people remaining, humanity is not over!" she yelled into his face. Shocked at the outburst, Tony nodded. "You are brilliant, you amaze me every day. Perhaps this is your fault. I can tell you right now, terrible things were going to happen eventually. It doesn't make you blameless, I know, but it means you're still a good guy. You've saved the world several times over! Get your butt in there and do it again!" she ordered at a higher volume than necessary. Tony gulped and started to go inside.

"Ok, yes, you're right," he nodded. The miserable expression on his face began to fade. If Y/N said he could do it, he undeniably could do it. And even if he lost the rest of the world… even if Pepper was already dead on her business trip, he could count on Y/N to be there for him. And the kid too, he guessed. "What's the kids name?" he asked as he began to calibrate his equipment.

"This is Jackson," Y/N said with a little more light in her voice, turning to her charge and bouncing him a little. Tony could swear that the kid had a bit of a smile on his face at the sound of his name. He would have smiled too if the situation had been different. He too knew firsthand how being around Y/N made bad situations that much more bearable.

-0-0-0-

Steve cursed whatever force was in charge of dishing out the good luck. Of all the times for the Quinjet to break down, now was _the worst possible time_.

The news showed something that looked like The Walking Dead. He had watched a few seasons with Y/N, and apparently, these zombies functioned the same way as the ones on TV. A functional quinjet would be great right about now so that the Avengers could fly from their new complex back to the old Avengers Tower, but without Tony to fix the thing, it might be too late by the time they managed some makeshift repairs.

He brought out the van.

The Avengers piled in as he idled the vehicle out front. Warily, he eyed Bucky. Y/N had warned him that, because she had brought the brunet back to Steve before he was supposed to come back, that he could act unpredictably. Steve was most worried that his friend would forget that he was no longer running from Hydra when he was in the middle of this zombie nonsense. It had happened before in a moment of battle, and the Captain didn't want to have to track down his friend in this mess.

For now, Bucky seemed fine. He turned on the radio as he buckled himself into the passenger seat, and proceeded to sit there with his normal broody body language.

Steve turned back to the steering wheel. They had to get to Tony fast and make sure that he was safe while he whipped up a cure, that was priority one. Steve's secret priority number two was to use the Stone to try and summon Y/N back to this dimension. He felt like that was this world's best chance for survival.

-0-0-0-

"Tony…"

Tony grunted noncommittally in reply.

"Tony!" Y/N said again, this time more urgently. Finally, the genius looked up. His attention was fully directed to his friend standing at the window when an unexpected explosion rocked the building. "Tony, they're bombing the city!" Y/N yelled.

"What!" he dropped his goggles and zipped to the window.

Sure enough, fighter jets were dropping explosives on the half human, half undead population below. "They can't do that!"

"They can and they are! Grab your stuff and get away from the windows!" she yelled, scooping up Jackson as she moved to the center of the room.

Tony had only just found the cure and was in the process of replicating it. As he scooped up the ready vials and an injection gun, a bomb hit the building, blowing the windows out.

Thrown to his stomach, Tony crushed the armful of vials he held to his chest. An inhuman scream ripped from his chest as he watched the fluid seep into the carpet.

"No! NO!" He rifled through the broken glass, looking for any vials remaining intact. Two. Exactly two remained.

A second bomb hit the building, and this time the foundation shuddered. This building, their safe haven for the past week, was coming down.

Tony inserted the first vial into the injection gun.

"Hand me the kid!" he yelled over the groans of the failing building. Y/N quickly handed him over and watched as Tony injected the vaccine into his arm. "You next!" Tony hollered.

"What? No! You use it! There's only one left!" Y/N yelled. She scooped up the shocked Jackson and started towards the stairs.

"No! Please!" he yelled at her receding form. Y/N wasn't one to put herself before others, and Tony couldn't think of any way to convince her to take the vaccine.

There was also the small issue that she was terrified of needles.

Tony got up and scrambled after her, grabbing the small suitcase he had prepared for if they needed to leave the tower. As they raced down the worryingly leaning stairs, he wracked his brain for any idea on how to convince his friend.

They reached the second to bottom floor. They walked out onto the viewing platform that let them look into the vacated lobby. None of the windows looking onto the street had been broken, keeping the stumbling bodies on the other side.

"We go out the back," Y/N decided. Tony knew that he would have to get the serum into her before she went outside if he was to do it at all…

Moving as quickly as his tired body could, he pulled Jackson out of her arms, set him on the floor and pinned Y/N to the wall.

"Oomf! Tony!" she yelled. Her eyes widened in absolute panic as he pulled out the injection gun. "Tony! Don't you dare!" Knowing that she was nearly as strong as he, Tony didn't wait to discuss the matter and pressed the instrument to her neck.

It was over quickly. Y/N's needle phobia overtook her, and she slumped quivering to the ground. Tony felt a moment's regret, but a growling from behind kept him from continuing the thought.

The Avenger's Tower receptionist had remained behind, apparently, and starved to death. Tony felt even worse, if that was at all possible, as the rotting form stepped hungrily towards him. He quickly fiddled with his watch, causing the repulsor glove to wrap around his wrist. One quick shot dispatched the threat.

Turning around, he saw that Y/N still hadn't gathered herself. Jackson was worriedly patting her hair as she tried, very transparently, not to cry. Tony pulled her up. She had only been like this a few times, most as a result of needles, and waiting for her to get over it would result in a building on their heads.

Tony pulled his best friend and the kid out of the back door, and stopped to open the suitcase. From the contents, he pulled out the compact version of his suit and put it on. Scooping up the two and grabbing his suitcase, he froze momentarily at a particularly loud groan from the building above.

He turned around just in time to see it falling… right in their direction.


	3. Chapter 3

_Thank you, Mari, for your comments. I'm totally writing a zombie fic again, and I would definitely consider doing another version of this fic._

-0-0-0-

Chapter 3

Steve parked the van down the street and just sat there in horror.

The entire building was gone. Driving into the city, he had panicked when, from a distance, none of them could see Avengers Tower rising above the other buildings. The pile of rubble was worse than what he had anticipated, however. Nothing could have survived that.

Maybe not even the Stone.

His small flicker of hope began to die out. The worried discussion going on in the back seats was barely audible to him as he fought his watering eyes.

Mankind was doomed, and he would never see Her again.

A zombie slapped its body against the side of the van with a wet, resounding smack. Wanda gave an involuntary shriek at the sight of its shattered, hanging jaw. Steve snapped out of it.

There were far too many zombies ahead. The Avengers had been fortunate, many of the stupid things had drowned themselves, leaving New York with a lot fewer mobile corpses than Steve had expected. The crowd ahead would surely shred them if they tried to get to the rubble, however. He still had to look for the Stone…

"Sam," he said, turing his head but keeping his eyes on the target, "Could you fly above them and draw them away so we can search the wreckage?"

As usual, Sam agreed, if a little unenthusiastically. Captain America needed him. _There's not much America left to be captain of, anyway,_ Steve chuckled to himself grimly. Once the horde was stumbling after his airborne friend, the remaining people piled out of the car and began to overturn the chunks of concrete and metal.

Frantically, Steve dug. Tony was lost, almost certainly, but if he could just find the Stone, maybe they still had a chance.

The Stone, of course, was the sentient force that moved Y/N throughout the multiverse to wherever She was needed. Steve had a personal gripe with said Stone, because he firmly believed that HE needed Her more. Sort of. She _was_ off saving lives, after all... Nevertheless, every time She had to go, it hurt him in a deeply personal way.

The Stone manifested itself as several glowing real stones. The jade green, slightly glowing rock was hard to miss. One existed in every universe, and one extra, smaller Stone was carried around by Y/N everywhere she went. If he could just find the one from this dimension, which was previously stored in the tower, he might be able to contact Her or convince the Stone to open a portal to wherever She was. If he could do that, perhaps She could save the world as She had so many times in the past.

And if not, at least he would have Her back.

He flipped a particularly large slab of concrete, and a green glint caught his eye. It was the stone!

It was… the smaller stone.

The one She carried around in her pocket!

She was HERE!

He scooped up the gently glowing stone and held it to his chest. _Wait…_

If the stone was in the rubble, She might have been in the building! She could be trapped in this mess!

"Everyone!" he yelled, ignoring the possibility of alerting zombies to their presence with the noise. "I found Y/N's pocket Stone! She might be under this stuff! We have to dig!"

Everyone's faces became frenzied at that announcement, and they began to overturn the large chunks with renewed vigor. Pietro, who had been saved from Ultron by Y/N, zipped around at an alarming rate as he tried to find her in the mess. He owed her his life, if she was trapped under this heavy and mangled pile… he couldn't stand the thought.

Making little progress on the veritable mountain, they toiled into the afternoon.

-0-0-0-

If ever Y/N had been confused, this was the day.

Her head hurt so badly, and the babbling small child who was following her around had informed her that _this was because a building had fallen on them_.

Of course, this kid also wanted them to go find Iron Man, so she felt like his first statement deserved some scrutiny. And anyway, how could a building have fallen on top of them if they were still alive?

Y/N stopped trying to convince the kid that Iron Man was just a movie after he had started crying. They seemed to be in the middle of New York… she wasn't sure how… but that might be why the kid thought Iron Man was real.

And then, there were zombies.

Y/N, raised in a much smaller town, was ill equipped to navigate the alleys to avoid the fowl creatures. She did her best, dragging the boy along. Jackson. Jackson was his name. He held an extreme horror for zombies, and Y/N could guess why.

What she COULDN'T guess why, was WHY WERE THERE ACTUAL ZOMBIES!? There had to be a reason. There had to be a LOGICAL reason, and she would find it.

She hauled Jackson up onto a dumpster so they could climb over a high fence. She felt… weak. Not that she had ever been strong, but now… as she struggled to push the small child over, she felt distinctly like she had become _weaker_. She knew she hadn't, she had always had this much difficulty in lifting her younger brother.

So many questions…

She had no time to ponder, however, because the zombies were everywhere. Running was all she could do.

-0-0-0-

Steve was sprayed with a shower of congealed red slime as he decapitated another zombie with his shield.

"There's too many of them! We have to fall back!" he hollered to his friends. The sun was low in the sky, they needed to escape the angry mob of undead and find shelter before it grew dark.

All afternoon had been wasted on the pile of rubble with no results. Steve was certain now that Y/N was either far away from here, under the rubble at the absolute bottom, or… a zombie.

He shuddered at the last thought.

The rout back to the van was cut off from the Avengers, so as more undead flooded towards them they began to separate.

"Meet up at the Chrysler Building!" he yelled over the cacophony of moaning. Several voices yelled in the affirmative, and then he lost them.

He ran as fast as he could.

 _Things will be ok,_ he assured himself. _She's here somewhere… it will all work out…_

Even so, he could feel his flicker of hope sputtering like a candle in the wind.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Peter Parker sat atop a building, eating his sandwich as he vacantly watched the mob on the dark street.

It wasn't his fault. It couldn't be his fault.

But it had to be his fault. Surely. None of those people who had died had deserved to die. None of them could have stopped this, either.

He should have been able to stop it. He was Spider-Man, for cripes sake!

Guilt threatened to envelope him. He looked down at his sandwich. Nobody below would ever be able to taste peanut butter and jam like he was now. He should be with them, he could have saved them, he could have saved Aunt May-

With a roar, he threw the sandwich as far as he could. It all was his fault! Uncle Ben, Aunt May, everyone at school whether he liked them or not…

Panting, he froze as his stomach grumbled. That had been the last of the peanut butter… He peered over the edge and spotted it on the ground. The five second rule had already passed… thirty second rule? He shrugged. This was the apocalypse, he couldn't afford to worry about germs. He leapt to the building across the street and quietly crawled down the side.

All the zombies were across on the side where he had been, drawn by his holler. The darkness hid him as he walked into the middle of the street to retrieve his snack. Turning to climb back up, he saw a face in a shop window.

Was that… Tony Stark?

The face hid when they made eye contact. Peter ran and ripped open the door to the shop, cringing as the bell above the door chimed.

"Close the door! Close the door and get down, kid!" the voice hissed. Peter quickly complied, nearly catching his backpack in the glass panel as he did. He crawled over to the source of the voice.

"…Hey! Are you Tony Stark?" he whispered loudly. The voice shushed him. In the dark, Peter couldn't see his face.

"Yes, I'm Tony Stark. You need to get out of here, they'll start banging on the glass because of that bell," Tony hissed.

"Oh, cool, I'm your biggest fan, like, um," Peter stuttered, forgetting the situation.

"Kid! Now is not the time to fangirl, we need to get out of here!" He paused. "…Do you have superpowers?" he inquired, seeming to only just now that the kid dropped from the side of the building. Peter hesitated. _It IS the apocalypse, everyone IS dead… I guess there's no point to a secret identity,_ he concluded.

"Yeah, I'm Spider-Man!"

"Spider MAN?" Tony asked, incredulous.

"Yeah!"

"But you're just a kid, kid!"

"I-" Peter's protest was cut off as two zombies smacked against the window. The two heroes ran to the back of the shop and found the stairs. Up they went, Tony deflecting Peter's comments and attempts at conversation the whole way.

"Listen, kid… people tend to die around me. Somebody just died the other day because I couldn't save them. You're going to want to do this on your own, trust me," Tony insisted as they reached the top floor and locked the door. Peter shook his head.

"But we're stronger together! Look, I've got this to travel on-" he shot webbing at a ventilation stack a few feet away. Tony stared. "I can do supply runs and stuff, and we can find more people and start civilization over again…"

"…Did you make that stuff?" Tony asked.

"Oh yah, and I have a couple years' worth of supply now. After everyone…" he gestured at the street, "You know… died…" he cringed, "I went and raided the stores that had the supplies. I should have enough stuff to last me until I'm your age!" he rambled, opening his backpack to reveal thousands of cartridges.

"Kid…"

"Mr. Stark, haven't you ever wanted to make the world a better place?" Peter earnestly pleaded, looking into Tony's eyes. "We have that chance now! We can make a new society, make it better than before!" Peter said, clearly getting excited. His guilt, while still present, faded to the background at the thought of reconciling himself this way. Tony thought for a minute.

"…Spider-Man…. Maybe you're right."

-0-0-0-

Bucky's undead body stumbled towards Steve. Tears ran freely down his face. It just never ended. He stood frozen as the unsteady corpse of his oldest friend made its way over to him. _I'll let it bite me… I'll let you bite me, Bucky, and then we can be together again…_ He lowered his shield and bared his neck. _Maybe I'll be with Her again…_

Just as the blood-covered teeth were about to clamp onto his flesh, a familiar scream sounded in the distance.

It sounded like Y/N

Without a moment's hesitation, he swung his shield up and shattered Bucky's head. For just a second he stared remorsefully at the lifeless body before running in the direction of the sound.

A good half hour of searching yielded nothing. The flame of hope was gone entirely; he had just imagined it. He climbed a nearby ladder and curled up in the fire escape.

All he could do was cry himself to sleep. The two people that mattered most to him were gone.

-0-0-0-

Y/N couldn't help the involuntary scream when the zombie bit into her leg. The knife she had found on her hip came in handy as she ran it through the corpse's head. She grabbed Jackson's hand and limped away as fast as she could. They needed to get out of this city before it was too late.

She was still in a state of shock from other events to cry over the fact that she had just been sentenced to death; For whatever reason, Iron Man was actually real. She'd found so many newspapers reporting on the avengers, books about them… in every shop they went into to scavenge for food, there was more and more proof of their existence. Y/N couldn't believe it… but she had to.

This had to be some sort of alternate universe.

How she had gotten here, she really didn't know.

The kid kept insisting that she was an Avenger. She found her face in the discarded newspapers. She found her name in books at the abandoned library. She quickly concluded that she had been in this dimension for a while and had lost her memory somehow. The painful lump on her head probably had something to do with it.

She hauled Jackson into a small restaurant that looked empty and barricaded the door. Setting him in a chair, she pulled the peroxide she had scavenged out of her backpack and tended to the oozing wound on her calf. She wondered if it was worth it to waste the peroxide, she would be dead soon anyway.

Finally, she had time to reflect.

The fact that she was in an alternate universe wasn't even the hardest thing to digest. That first place position went to the fact that she looked entirely different than she remembered.

She had been absolutely shocked when, upon glancing in a reflective window, she saw her changed appearance.

Dark brown hair, nearly black, was tied up and out of the way. Releasing it showed that it fell to her mid-back and that it was slightly wavy. She was annoyingly short, and had an even more annoyingly pale skin-tone that had confused her when she first looked at her hands. She was thinner than she had been before, probably because she had been too busy dealing with the apocalypse to eat properly. Her well defined collarbones showed through her slightly torn shirt.

She really didn't know if she liked how she looked now. Honestly, she looked slight enough that she might fall apart if she had to battle a particularly large crowd of zombies. Up until now, she had been fine, but in the future they might not be so lucky…

Not that it mattered, she would be dead from this bite very soon.

She finished tying a scrap of her tee shirt around her leg and pulled Jackson to his feet. Outside of the city there would probably be fewer zombies, so outside of the city they would go. Jackson would have the most chance of survival there once she was zombified.

So, off they went.


	5. Chapter 5

***PLEASE READ THIS!*MOVING TO ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN***

 **As it turns out, doesn't allow reader inserts. I've already invested several hours editing this story, so I'm not going to go through and swap every instance of "Y/N" for an OC's name, because it would take more work than just that. If you should care to read the story further, you can find a link to my Archive of Our Own profile on my profile here.**

 **Thx.**

Chapter 5

The sky was blue. So blue. Clouds drifted across, gently, cheerfully. It all just _oozed_ happiness. Steve loathed it all.

He rolled on his stomach. Zombies clambered against the side of the semi-truck he was on, moaning hungrily as they smeared their own blood across the white metal.

He rolled on his back again. The sky seemed to sing, and a sparrow swooped by whistling its tune.

Onto his stomach. Blood and gore.

Onto his back. Sickeningly happy sky.

Stomach. Back. Stomach. Back.

He stopped rolling as he reached the edge of the Semi-truck's trailer. He just laid there and glowered at the sky. It should match the ground. It should be raining or something. _Thunder._ Yes, that was it.

There was little doubt in Steve's mind that he was depressed. He wouldn't be surprised if someone told him he'd lost his mind, either. He could barely move to roll from one side of the trailer's roof to the other, much less scavenge for the massive amounts of food he needed to survive. He'd found several of his friends' corpses, and each hit harder than the last. He gave up trying to fight when he encountered Pietro's zombie. Y/N's sacrifice to save him had been rendered pointless. And… if somebody that fast couldn't stay alive, what chance did he have?

So, he sat on the roof of the semi-truck and rolled back and forth across the length of the roof. Sky, ground, sky, ground.

His mind played cruel tricks on him. Once, he thought he had heard Her singing in the middle of the night. It was a song that she used to sing to him when he would have a horrible nightmare. He wished she was here to sing to him now, to tell him that this real-life nightmare was just something else that he had dreamed up, just another result of his PTSD. But he had no hope, no energy, no drive.

 _I made it almost a full month into the zombie apocalypse… I can brag about that to Y/N once I'm dead,_ he consoled himself. _That is, if I go to heaven. She's there, for sure. Maybe I'll get sent there too, even though I couldn't save them…_

So he rolled some more and waited.

-0-0-0-

Y/N sighed as a crash resounded from the other room.

"Jackson, what did you do this time?" she asked, barely managing to hide her frustration. The boy had enough bad in his life, he didn't need to feel like she hated him because of her tone.

"Um… 'dis bowl here was in my way…" he mumbled, barely audible. She huffed and finished tying up her hair.

They had found a nice little house in a mostly zombie-free neighborhood up in the Bronx, fully stocked with food and water. The owner of the house had hung himself. Y/N stuffed down the selfish idea that she was _glad_ the man killed himself before he had used up the supplies. _Just be grateful that you have it, don't be happy for others' misfortunes,_ she reminded herself. She had to stay positive, she couldn't let the environment change her.

She had plenty to be positive about. For whatever reason, she hadn't died from the bite. She knew it wasn't the peroxide, she had gone very light on that. A horrible week had passed, then another, and finally she accepted that she was going to live.

"Wanna help me clean it up?" she grinned, hiding her worries with the fake smile. Jackson, bless his heart, grinned back and ran to find the broom. Y/N would never understand his obsession with brooms, but it made him happy.

She picked up the larger chunks of ceramic and threw them into a scavenged bag as her charge haphazardly swiped the broom across the floor, sending shards everywhere. She stifled another sigh, resolving to clean them up after he fell asleep that night.

By her count, it had been about three weeks since she had found herself in this strange situation. Jackson said that the zombies had been walking around about a week before the building fell on them. That is, he SAID seven days but he held up four fingers, so Y/N took it with a grain of salt.

When the gallon bottles of water ran out, she blessed whatever had possessed her to read survival books back in her dimension. She knew how to make an effective water filter with charcoal, dirt, sand and rocks, which proved to be entirely necessary.

Between having her new pal Jackson, running a house of her own, and providing food and water, this was starting to feel… homey.

A familiar groan sounded from the general front-yard area.

"Ugh. I'll get it, you keep sweeping," she told her charge. To the front door she stalked, knife drawn, and opened it.

She wished she hadn't.

There was at least thirty of them, and they had been QUIET. As she slammed the door shut and bolted it, they finally began to make noise. She felt them thud against the door.

"Uh… Jackson, grab your bag, we're going out the back door!" she yelled.

-0-0-0-

Steve regretted leaving his truck to head north. Sure, there were less zombies. Sure, he had found plenty of food. But was he happy?

No.

He had planned to die on top of that truck, but something compelled him to leave.

He swung the shield around a bit in a playful manner, trying to get SOME emotion to rise to the surface aside from this black, heavy sensation.

He looked around at the scenery. The houses were awfully close together here. He didn't really like that much. Memories of Germany flooded back. He couldn't say that he missed war, but the open spaces there had been pretty nice. The cities always felt more cramped since he took the serum and got bigger himself.

His dazed daydreaming came to a halt at the distant sound of a kid crying. For a moment he considered ignoring the wails, but it suddenly felt like a fog had lifted. He had to save that kid, whoever it was didn't deserve to die. He took off running in that direction of the loud cries.

-0-0-0-

Y/N knew that this was REALLY the end. With her back to a neighboring house and with Jackson clinging to her ankle, she slashed at the mob pressing in. This would be bad, this would be really, really bad. Being torn apart was one of the worst ways she could imagine to die, and the poor kid was about to have that happen to him.

There was definitely no way out, the horde was about ten corpses wide in every direction. There had to be at least a hundred. Her arm was tiring even now. Jackson's wails were drawing more by the minute. She looked down at him.

She couldn't let him suffer the slow fate the zombies had in store. Gently she put her hand on the back of his head and readied herself to drive her knife through his head. It would be quick and painless. Tears fell from her eyes.

"Don't worry, Jackson, it will all be okay," she comforted him as she raised the knife out of his line of sight.

With a choked sob, she tensed to do the deed, but something stopped her.

It was a flash of red, white and blue out of the corner of her eye.


End file.
